The Transaction

TT - 053 - Lars Nilsson
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Lars Nilsson: [00:00:00] Cold calling has never been dead. It just goes through cycles.

The content is king. Without inspiration and education, that someone can read or watch or listen, no one's gonna know you're out there. You still need to have an unbelievable content game.

We've even taken that a step further and provided frontline sales development training for the leaders, A lot of SDR leaders have never been formally trained on anything.

With one Go-To-Market engineer today, that one role is gonna make five SDRs punch like they're 25.

Each one will be able to punch above like they are five individuals because of all the automation.

Sam Guertin: Craig, once you're done with your mastication, um, we can get going.

Lars Nilsson: That's actually funny because I used to sell titanium dental implant systems to oral surgeons and they would place these titanium screws in people's pie holes so they could eat better, and that's where I learned the term mastication.

Craig Rosenberg: That's amazing.

Lars Nilsson: do you need any [00:01:00] implants? Uh, Craig.

Craig Rosenberg: No, thank God I do not, but I know where to get him now. I guess, you know.

Lars Nilsson: Only

Craig Rosenberg: Well, you know, I, I eat fast and it could be shocking. I remember Lars and I were at like, God, it was a long time ago. It doesn't seem time flies. And I, we got sandwiches and he just like laughing hysterically while I ate my sandwich in one minute. He was like,

Lars Nilsson: you, you, you, you, you leave, you leave a bunch of it on your sweater and you know, on

your yeah, yeah. All over the place. Yeah. But I mean, the most important thing is, do I? Yeah, I remember that. Did you Were dying, my God, by the way, you guys, I didn't bring a uh, something to wear, but I do have these glasses. Your guys thoughts. Maybe this works or.

Matt Amundson: Yeah,

Craig Rosenberg: No, eh, I mean, I mean, why not?

Matt Amundson: the glasses crew today.

Craig Rosenberg: by the way, Lars, you've, you've, you are looking good, buddy.

The [00:02:00] workout regimen. My God, Jesus Christ. Look at this dynamo man, this guy.

Lars Nilsson: good, Biff? Yeah. Um, well when you, when you uh, when you punch out, um, and prioritize health and wellness. Yeah. Six, six days a week I'm working out, so it feels great.

Matt Amundson: and the tan and the This Hawaiian shirt

Craig Rosenberg: you.

know what I'm calling, we're canceling this show, man. He's making a, I mean, this guy, he's looking great. Or we do a redirect on the show and it's, it's more of a like male model type of thing.

Adult Stop. Stop.

Matt Amundson: He is looking like Steven Brody right now in his Hawaiian shirt. Just shredded. And tanned.

Craig Rosenberg: this

Lars Nilsson: guys are just buttering me up. I've got so much history with both of you. I can't, no, we're, we're not, we're not, pushing this. we're going deep.

Matt Amundson: Yeah. We're gonna go

deep. We're going deep.

​

[00:03:00]

Introducing Lars Nilsson, Founder & CEO of SalesSource
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Craig Rosenberg: for the listeners of the transaction, we have a, um, a literally one of my oldest friends in the business. It's a pleasure to have this guest. He was, he is literally one of the OGs of sales development. I mean, literally, and our connection was, uh, we were both mentored by a guy named Stu Silverman, who, as I say to everyone, if your name's Stu Silverman, you have, you have one choice in life, and that is to be a guru of something, anything.

Right. And so, uh, I mean he went to MIT right? Or so Harvard Business School, didn't he? Well, he has a, he's a crazy brilliant guy. He, he worked for Henry Kissinger, [00:04:00] um, decides to come to the valley. He builds the. Original SDR teams at like Cisco, sun Deck, all this shit. And then he was a consultant and Lars, he had worked with Lars at Portal, I think.

Um, and then, um, I was working for him as a consultant. And then, um, we crossed paths at a company called, uh, rap, where there are lots of funny stories of my first, um, introduction to his old Lars's old boss. Uh. Uh, boss there some incredible stuff. We'll see if we get to that. But over the years Lars has like, um, sort of, he's grown with the industry.

So like, you know, at Portal, you know, he was one of the OGs and SDR and he could tell you that was not easy. Like back in those days, it's so hard for these young folks to understand. We had to convince the market that. And SDR was the right thing. I mean like It wasn't no brainer, the sort of pipeline generation.

And then as the industry started to [00:05:00] grow, Lars continued to evolve, right? So, uh, in some of his most remarkable work lately was, you know, I still quote some of the things he did at Cloudera. Uh, that, that epic sort of real high tech, hardcore, high tech outbound, like, uh, trying to get to CTOs and, and whatnot, doing amazing stuff there.

And then at Snowflake, I think Lars tried to retire, build his own business. Then he got drawn back into Snowflake, brought his guys in there and they did like incredible stuff there. I mean, like the SDR Academy, I spoke there a couple times. It was just incredible shit. So, um. This guy is the OG and one of the masters of the universe in sales development and in sales, inside sales and business, and clearly very fit.

Today's guest on The Transaction, Lars Nilsson. There we go. How about that

Matt Amundson: Yeah, that was a good

in

Craig Rosenberg: nail. I Nailed that.

shit. Nailed that.

Matt Amundson: That was a proper [00:06:00] intro.

Craig Rosenberg: I mean, this guy's, yeah, he's a legend.

Matt Amundson: Well, you're

Lars Nilsson: no, no, no. I mean, Stu Silverman, Annika Sealey, Trish Bertuzzi, MJ Chuy, uh, Sal, you know, Sally Duby. I mean, these, these are the women and people that all came before us, Craig. And they were the ones, in my opinion, that kind of innovated on inbound outbound. And I drafted in on a lot of their, um, success, prior success.

But yeah, I, uh, when I punched out at Snowflake, uh, mid last year, I. I. think I have 25 years of SDR leadership under my belt. And, uh, I, I, you know, I've loved that role. I've loved that

function and yeah, I've helped a few companies grow, um, through different various financings and into public companies and it's just been a joy I.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah. That's awesome. I love having you on the show, man. We, we, Matt and I deliberately delayed you a bit and [00:07:00] now it's perfect timing. Um. Uh, you look, you should next time tell everyone you're coming in from Costa Rica or something like that. 'cause it looks like it. Um, so here's how we like to start the show.

So we have two questions overall, right? And, um, I'm leading with number one, which we call the Matt Amundson feature Enhancement 2.1 A. And that is. We, we wanna leave with a story, so tell, or more, you know, whatever, you know, however many stories you want to do upfront. But like, the idea is like, what's a great Go-To-Market story, um, to tell the audience.

It could be funny, it could be ridiculous, or it could be, you know, heartwarming or heroic, you know, whatever you want to do. We just leave that really wide open and, and, and start with that. So talk to us, Lars. What do you got for us?

The Genesis of Sales Development in SaaS & How it Expanded on Account-Based Marketing Concepts
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Lars Nilsson: Yeah, well I, as I was kind of going through my walk this morning and preparing mentally, uh, when I think of the start of my career, which, you know, I graduated from uc, Santa Barbara in 19 88, 89, I got my [00:08:00] first gig, uh, you know, in college was Xerox Corporation. And as I look back in my career now, that's 37 years in the making.

years in I got to see what truly great looked like in so many different ways. Working for that company, right? Interviewing, onboarding, enablement, training, frontline leadership, second line directorship, C-level, I mean, Xerox in the seventies and eighties, like IBM, I mean, that's. If you wanted to be trained by the very best and work for the very best, those were the two companies.

And when I got into the Valley, uh, with portal in 1997, or actually yeah, 1995, um, it was the go-go days. There was no one that came out of those two companies that were building startups. And the cool thing for me when I got into high tech, um, there was no one who had any formal training in in sales. unless [00:09:00] you came from Oracle and, you know, as you mentioned, I worked for Kevin Moser and, um, got to drop right into that, uh, machinery.

But, uh, when I started building, um, I had management training, enablement, um, and I had seen what really good looked like. So every company I went into, I wanted to make sure that the people that I hired, uh, especially on the SDR front, had access to not just. A playbook and then throw 'em in the deep end, but give them, um, world class and renowned trainers that could help them understand how to cold call.

Um. How to manage a territory, how to manage your day, week, month. So anyway, in every companies that I went to, I kind of, I was the guy that wanted to make sure my SDRs got inspiration, training and development. Um, and it turns out that that also creates

stickiness. When you help someone's career and you mentor and coach [00:10:00] them, um, they're gonna stay with you a little bit longer.

So that's been kind of a staple, uh, for me. And I got it right out of college. Uh, 'cause I really got to see what great looked like. Um. And that really was the impetus for the Snowflake Sales Development Academy, which I had wanted to do my entire career, but no company had the means or resources or money and, and I finally, at the very end of my career, I got to do that.

Matt Amundson: I was gonna ask the question like, what, what is the Sistine Chapel? You know, what, what was your masterpiece when it came to sales development, and why is it Snowflake? And I think you, you answered it.

Lars Nilsson: Yeah, well, I mean, I wanna, you know, bring you, and especially Craig back, I think 11 years ago and, uh, Craig, you were the one that, um, allowed me to post my kind of, I mean, my opus, my, um, Jerry McGuire manifesto moment was when, um, I had read Jon [00:11:00] Miller's piece, uh,

piece, uh,

with Spears, and he had. Kind of talked about account based marketing, and I was reading all this really cool stuff he was putting out there, and I was getting pissed because my team at Cloudera was doing exactly what he was doing right? Crafting messages, personalizing them, and doing one to many. And he was talking about marketing and marketing, automation and marketing, account based marketing. And so I decided to sit down with John and. Give him a kind of a, a, a first draft of my account based sales development. I kind of wanted, and he read it and he is like, Lars, I completely missed the sales aspect of this.

And sales and marketing are already so siloed that the, I miss this. You have to publish this. And that's when I came to you. 'cause the funnelholic was just At its At its opus, at its pinnacle. And, uh, you [00:12:00] let me post that And that's really what, after that went global viral and I became known as the architect and kind of the, uh, the, the father of A BSD.

That's when my brand, my career opportunities, the idea for Salesforce, uh, all came. Um, and it was all. It all came about because of sales engagement, right? The one technology that made SDRs some of the most relevant in any company, right? The pipeline that we were able to generate, uh, from an SDR team armed with sales engagement and, you know, data providers and all the other things that have come on changed the. Direction of the

SDR and it catapulted us, uh, into prominence and I'm proud to have a, a,

small piece in that. But Craig, your Funnelholic, uh, had the readership and of course Max with his media company back then also, and Jason [00:13:00] Disaster. They all picked it up and were very generous and, you know, invited me on stage to talk about it.

Craig Rosenberg: thank you for bringing up the funnelholic. Not many people know about it. Uh, I, the only remnant of it right now is the, uh, is the Twitter handle or X handle or whatever. Uh, right. I think I, I, I, I'd have to go find some stuff. It, that was, those were fun days. It was early content. Can I just. Do.

How Xerox Trained Their B2B Sales Team and What Startups Should Learn from Their Success
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Craig Rosenberg: One thing I gotta ask you since you're on, is it true that Xerox trains used to train people on how to slide the pen across the table to get them to sign a

Matt Amundson: Ooh.

Lars Nilsson: No, it was more selling of the pen, but wasn't sliding the pen. But, uh, no, I mean my onboarding, enablement and training lasted 11 months. At Xerox and they sent me to different training centers. There was one in Chicago, one in Dallas, one in Lee, a very famous one in Leesburg, Virginia. And you know, from the ground up, you know, I had to memorize a 17 page script [00:14:00] on how to sell the 50 52 copier. and I had to do It verbatim. It took me two months to, yeah, I mean it was, uh, this was, you know, building from the ground up. Then they'd send you to Chicago to learn how to handle objections for three weeks. Then they'd learn, you know, send you to Dallas and you'd have to present, uh, then you'd go to Leesburg and you go through negotiation and closing training.

I. Uh, this stuff can be taught. Um, and there was no one, you know, today there are universities that have sales programs, but back then, if you wanted to learn how to sell, it was IBM and Xerox. Um, I think the Valley has done a pretty poor job over the decades. I mean, Oracle definitely had something. I think Salesforce used to have an academy.

I mean, they have a, uh, an onboarding and enablement, but I think a lot of.

Tech companies throw SDRs into their sales and marketing onboarding, and maybe then have the frontline leader give them a [00:15:00] week on their own, but.

The other thing I'm super proud of is, uh, coming up with SDR, operations enablement and training.

So back at Cloudera, I had an SDR that just didn't quite fit, but he dug all the tech that we were implementing and so I put him in as the team ops enablement and training guy, and it, it took so much pressure off the frontline leaders so they could be, you know, what do you want? A frontline SDR leader?

You want them hiring? Uh, and you want them coaching, um, you know, to sit there and, and help them understand all the different technologies and motions and help 'em, you know, adopt these playbooks takes a lot of time. And just taking that pressure off frontline leaders by having a dedicated function to SDR training.

Um, and that's also what led to. Uh, that's the team really that came up with the Snowflake Sales Development Academy. So we took the principles of what Xerox did, [00:16:00] matched it up with the operators that were selecting the tech stack at Snowflake, and then building motions and playbooks and uh, putting them having as a part of their onboarding training. So it's a month long onboarding dedicated SDRs. We had Josh Braun. Now we have Kevin Dorsey as trainers, uh, and we've even taken that a step further and provided frontline sales development training for the leaders, right? A lot of SDR leaders have never been formally trained on anything. Um, and so Kevin Dorsey now owns the leadership training for Frontline SDR leaders at Snowflake, and that was a huge huge level up.

Craig Rosenberg: That's amazing. Can you imagine right now if Matt at um, at Matt's at DuploCloud and he went to the board and said, you know what guys? I learned a lot about Xerox training. We're not gonna, we're gonna train people for 10 months. [00:17:00]

You

know, it's like. Uh, that, you know, that is the, you know, in the valley, I, there's plenty of people that don't get it, but there's plenty of people that do on the enablement side, but we don't have time.

And it's like, um, it's, it's just amazing. But you're doing the right thing. So the SDR Academy, you know, you're in the seat, but you're in a continual learning motion. Um, and getting better and better at your job. And that's, that's what's really cool. Uh, I want to dig back into that before I do.

Um, so, uh, do you have any amazing, uh, Kevin Moser stories?

Lars Nilsson: Uh, I went to his, uh, wedding, uh, several months ago. He's on the East coast. He's re he's retired. I mean, I followed him to three or four different companies, right? Uh, he was the hard hammer, uh, Oracle guy, and I was the soft, softer hammer Xerox guy. You know, we at Xerox, you. know, love you. [00:18:00] Um, and it, and it, and it worked.

It worked really well. Um. And so, um, I was his right hand master sergeant, uh, through so many different companies, right? Uh, portal wrapped, um, ArcSight. He was the one also introduced me to the venture capital firm backing Riverbed, where I spent some

Matt Amundson: Mm-hmm.

Lars Nilsson: Um, he's still a really big

part of my life.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah. That guy, that guy was, uh, amazing man. He was just that group of in the valley. These, I don't know that we have many of 'em anymore, that the Bobby Knight of Sales Leadership, you know, there was a lot of 'em. I mean like, but uh, Kevin was famous and. I experienced it and I experienced it and I think, like when people ask me, I'm like, well, look, he was, he was loud and he was tough and relentless and he wouldn't close his door if he was dressing you down.

But he had more, probably the percentage of million dollar reps that guy had of reps [00:19:00] is probably the highest I'd ever see. You know, like he's gonna, you, you can get through and you can parse through and figure out what you need to learn, and you're a rep with him, you're gonna make a million bucks. You know, and like, uh, he was good, but he was, he was, he was tough.

Lars Nilsson: Well, yeah. I mean, and that wa that was the era of the art artist, right? The enterprise class software rep that had to. You know, seek out champions, test them, uh, use them in their sales process in a multi-stakeholder consensus sell where there's, you know, not just objection handling and qualification all along the way, but then you get into negotiation and then you gotta go through procurement and, um, you gotta align your executives and maybe even board members, I mean, right, in all the product-led growth companies, uh, that are popping up, um, the transactions are not. That big and they don't last as long. Um, so that, that's becoming a lost art. snowflake and interesting, I [00:20:00] went from Cloudera where I spent four or five years to Snowflake, where I spent four or five years, you know, selling the same thing. Cloud data storage, right? A commodity, but two completely different, uh, ways of engaging with a customer.

I mean, the sales cycles at Cloudera. You know, we're 12 to 18 months in many instances. And at Snowflake, um, you know, you could download and get your a thousand or 4,000 free credits and begin, uh, pointing data sources at an instance for free by yourself. Um, and then self upgrade and self upsell.

Self-renew, so completely different. Um, same technologies, different selling motions. And I look back at my time at. Snowflake and I mean, we built that team up to over 300 SDR and it was never a problem getting meetings. Um, I'm not gonna say it was really, really easy, but we had the name, we had the tech, we had the, [00:21:00] um, all, all, all, all the motions, all the A, B, SD motions in play.

I mean, um, easiest job I've ever had. And at the same time, fun.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah.

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: All right. So since we've sort of transitioned to how times have changed, then we'll go to question two, which is, um. What's something that the market thinks, or some things that the market thinks they're doing right? Could be anything. Approach, methodology, tactics, and they're actually wrong and they should be thinking about it differently.

So what, you know, what are those things and what should they be doing?

The Emerging GTM Engineer Role & The Impact Its Having on B2B Sales Teams Using AI Tools
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Lars Nilsson: Well, I mean, everyone's talking about AI and how that plays into not just the SDR role, but you know, just Go-To-Market in general, right? There's this new, uh, title called the GTM Engineer and, uh, I, have two of them that worked for me and with me. Karan Singh. You'll remember. Um. Craig and, and also Travis Henry.

I mean, these are [00:22:00] the guys that understood not just what technology to select, but then how to implement them and how to orchestrate them together into motions that tied in marketing and sales and, uh, customer success and, uh, organize and elegant and, uh. Very deliberate cold outreach. Um, those are, I think, the true artists today.

And I think with a one Go-To-Market engineer today, uh, with a team of five, 10 or or 20 SDRs, that one, that one role is gonna make five SDRs punch like they're 25.

and I think that's where the big story is while everyone's, you know, SDRs are dead and they're getting replaced by these avatars and deepfake, um, that's gonna happen.

But, uh, the high energy, high output, high activity SDR is, uh, gonna stay. Um, I just think that [00:23:00] snowflake with 300 SDRs today, maybe in two years, they'll have 50. But each one will be able to punch above like they are five, uh, individuals because of all the automation. Um, the other thing you have to be careful of is the best AEs at a company are SDRs that, get promoted into those roles, right?

Uh, 18, 24 months in, you fall in love with your company, the product, the people, you know. I mean, it's an unbelievable training ground. Um, for your future sellers, and I would submit that at Snowflake, we were hiring 25 to 30 SDRs a quarter. Um, and when we caught up to that, we're also now today putting into the Snowflake ecosystem, 25 SDRs every quarter.

Now, 80% of those are going into, you know, field level quota carrying IRS or SMB reps, but they're still 20%. So five to eight of [00:24:00] them decide they don't want to go into sales, and they're going into marketing and they're going into operations. They're going into. Partner roles. Um, and whenever they did that at Snowflake, those leaders would come and say, Lars, I don't know what, where you found this person, but they're already doing three x the work of my current members on the team, and they've never done the job

before. So again, I think this high energy, high output, high activity persona that is the

SDR we have to try

to keep

them. Alive, um, for demand

gen. But, um, they also are gonna,

I mean, you just probably saw the news, our

former CRO at

Snowflake, Chris

Deman, right? He started as an

SDR. Um, a lot of the CROs

today are

the, you know, they come from our background,

um, and beating bushes.

I mean, we, we, set it back in the

eighties, right? You gotta beat the

bushes, let the apples fall.

We still gotta do

that. Uh, [00:25:00] you're not gonna automatically, whether you're using, it doesn't matter all the tech

in the world at the end of the day,

there's still hopefully going to be a conversation,

um, with the target prospect, uh, in, with, uh, someone at your

company.

Um, so yeah.

Matt Amundson: it's amazing when I think about Snowflake and I think about. How central the SDR role at Snowflake is to the Snowflake story. Right, so Craig had Chris on stage at the Go-To-Market summit last year, and he told his story about, Hey, you know, I joined the company as a first sales leader and I spent the first, I can't remember if it was 18 or 24 months, just, you know, calling people so that I could, you know, put the product in front of them. And then it becomes this, you know, and that's, that's sort of how we, you guys got it off the ground and, and got the first couple of customers, how, how you had this pro great product feedback loop to develop the, the first version of the product. [00:26:00] And then it becomes this massive growth driver for the organization.

You enter the business, you build like the modern. Sales Development Academy, you know, one the likes nobody had seen since Oracle had done it. And, you know, you, you create this amazing machinery, not only for how you build pipeline, but how you sort of cultivate the next, uh, group of, of salespeople and marketers to your point.

And then, you know, as, as the company's going public, like, you know, there is an inclusion of the SDR role. In, in all the, in sort of the deck to take the company out. And it's just this, this magical thing that sort of, kind of permeates throughout the history of Snowflake. I, I, I can't help but be struck by that.

Every time, you know, you hear someone talk about the success of, of Snowflake. Yeah. You know, this, this, this SDR position is, is a critical portion of both, like the sort of genesis of the organization, the growth stage of the organization, that what ultimately gave it the juice to take it out.

Lars Nilsson: [00:27:00] Well, you're bringing up an unbelievably important point because something incredible happened in my first quarter when I joined Snowflake, and I joined on the heels of Nicolette Mullinax building that global or global organization. So she's the one who started it, who grew it, who built it, and then handed me, you know, a very tight package that I then. You know, used my A BSD playbooks and we accelerated from there, but she, uh, kudos to, to Nicolette. But what blew me away, so our CEO, Frank Sluman, who many people know in the valley, um, he wrote this really cool book, amped up. But three weeks, three months into my tenure, he was famous for writing Frank's Monday morning message, which every week without fail, he would get out.

He dedicated one of those offerings. To a shout out to the Snowflake SDR team. I didn't even, I don't even think he knew who I was at that point. We had not [00:28:00] met, and he basically nailed everything about the role and the function and he helped the company right? At the time, there was maybe 4,000 people understand how critical this role was and to help and to get involved and to support.

So when you have a CEO that. Not only understands the SDR role, but is now talking about it and, you know, throwing respect its way. And, uh, I, I mean, I felt so supported and the whole global team is just like, are you kidding me? We're gonna run through walls. And you know, in the last 15 years I've spent a lot of time consulting and helping companies.

I build SDR teams. But what happened most of the engagements were SDR team turnarounds. And Craig, you're gonna remember

this because you actually were a gun for hire 10 99 to me in Salesforce, and you helped me do a [00:29:00] deal at Blue Coat. You remember that

Craig Rosenberg: Mm-hmm.

Lars Nilsson: You were a 10 99 for Salesforce, my

brother and, and the story that we got was they had tried to relaunch that team.

Every year for five years and failed.

And when I shared that

with, uh, Craig, he's

like, what are you charging?

And I said, 50 grand.

He said, if I charge him a

hundred grand, can I get half? And I, I'm, I'm like, absolutely.

He went in, in one meeting, Craig and I, I hope you remember this. You close them

and next thing I know, I'm just watching you.

Wax poetic,

uh, inside the team of Blue Coat. Um.

Rebuilding that team from the ground up

after a five year fail. And you can imagine you build a team for a year, then you scrub it, then you build it

over. Forget about the millions of dollars in hard costs to do that year after

year, but just the soft cost in, uh, opportunity

costs

lost.

Um, so that was, uh, transformational for [00:30:00] me, Craig, just how much, um, the problem of building pipeline is,

and if you can deploy an SDR

team

that is. Well hired, well-trained, well developed, well

coached, well managed.

You can build a

company like Snowflake and have them go public and Cloudera and uh, Riverbed and all

these companies.

And I think the very best companies in the Valley

have grown on the back of a well organized, orchestrated, and built SDR

team. Um, there's 98% of 'em that don't know

what they're doing. Um, uh, anyway.

Craig Rosenberg: I got it. So can I, uh, so are, are they their Go-To-Market engineers? That's the new thing, right?

Lars Nilsson: Yeah. Uh, it's not a rev ops or sales ops person. A Go-To-Market engineer is someone that likely comes out of an operations team, but they have also been super involved in helping [00:31:00] sales and marketing select the technologies. And now with. Clay and POCUS and all these other AI native tools that are coming out that allow you to stitch together not just the technology, but the motions, and you build automation paths.

Um, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're critical. Um, and those are the ones that, you know, with a Go-To-Market engineer on your budding SDR team, uh, you don't have to, you know, as the number gets bigger, you don't necessarily have to. Uh, you know, put bodies on it. A go-to-market engineer can create efficiencies and effectiveness, uh, across entire marketing, sales, and SDR teams. Um, and for those, go, go ahead. ahead. No, finish.

Oh, uh, the, the influencer, in my

opinion, uh, it used to

be Craig

Rosenberg at the Funnelholic, but there's a guy by the name of Brendan Short.

[00:32:00] Um, he was also a 10 99 for me

at, um, sales Source. Uh, he's now, um, the author of The

Signal and I think globally,

he's, he's, you know, he's definitely one to,

uh, listen

to because, uh, he's pounding and punching through all these new technologies that are coming out.

And, um, he's kind of like the

voice out there that, uh, a lot of people are listening

to. You know, after the Funnel Holic came, Pete Kanji and Modern Sales Pros, and we all got a ton of best practices.

Matt, you put out so many great things when you were at

EverString that we all read. There was the A ISP, there's, you know, but today, uh, I'm following influencers that are very vocal about,

uh, the tech technology and the motions

that they're putting out there.

And I think Brendan Schwartz, one of the,

uh, uh, one of the supreme leaders of that

Matt Amundson: I totally agree with you. I think he's got like this wonderful blend of like art and [00:33:00] science in terms of how he's thinking about like the future of sales development. And you know, some of it's. It sounds a little scary, right? Like especially to, you know, people maybe, you know, like, like us who have been used to like, Hey, there's a certain set of tooling that goes along with this and there's a process that we all follow and we're perfecting that process.

It's, you know, triple touch and it's a seven by seven and it's this, that and the other, and it's, you know, flooded with enablement and supported by data and all this stuff, but some of the things that he's talking about are truly mind blowing. And, you know, it's, it's, he's going into this sort of new space of all this new technology that people haven't really sort of uncorked all the value of.

And he's, he's demonstrating how to put it all together and turn it into a machine that becomes, to your point, this giant force multiplier. So if you're not following Brandon, you de you guys definitely should be following Brandon Short. Uh, Craig, I believe you have him on the bat tour in Austin, is

Craig Rosenberg: Austin, is that correct? [00:34:00] That is correct. That's my guy, man. I love that guy. He's high energy. Just what Matt's referring to. Oh, I'm gonna do a Sam, I'll just, but in

Craig Rosenberg: what the speaker is referring to now, um, I'm going to, for in Austin next week, I threw together an impromptu Go-To-Market, uh, meet up on a boat.

'cause I wanted to see the. My kids are going, I'm going with my kids. I wanted them to see the bats. And I'm like, I want to combine the two things. We'll get on a boat and we'll go watch the bats. And I got like, Jason Vargas is coming. That's my guy too, man. You

guys know God. Just such an

the guy's huge. Yo, for sure. Brandon Short.

It's gonna be fun. Um, so, oh, Kathy Mki, who's an all timer by the way. So let's go back. So, by the way, Sam, can you go by GTM Engineer? AI if it's available. I doubt it is. We should buy it right now. Thank on GoDaddy real

Matt Amundson: quick.

Craig Rosenberg: hey. All right, so let's do a couple things I want to dig in on. So [00:35:00] one is, how do we replicate the Snowflake SDR Academy at a startup?

Like, what would you do to do that, Lars? Any thoughts on that? I wanna, I want to take, 'cause you guys look at the end of the day, you guys know this. I mean, you said it up front, there's a difference between the resources. Snowflake was willing to press against the, the operation that you had there, which by the way was incredible versus someone else.

But you all have always been, and clearly the focus of the show, the first thing you talked about with Xerox was your enablement. So how do we do that for our two man SDR team growing to five. Um, at a startup, how do we replicate what you Yeah, I don't, I don't know that individual companies can, I mean, startups need people that have been in the role they're hiring for and that come in with experience and knowledge and Rolodex and, and all of that. I don't know that you can, but, uh, if I was, I would, you know, and, you know, uh, Matt over at sass, sassy Sales and, um, John Barrow's training and Becc Holland, I mean, [00:36:00] there's enough people out there that have content.

Lars Nilsson: For SDRs, uh, Becc Holland, uh, uh, flipped the script, has some of the best stuff for individual contributor SDRs, and I send a lot of SDRs to her website. Um, now you've also, have, you, have you guys heard of this company, hyper Bound?

Um, these two, uh, young Indian, um, OUL, um, they have a, a kind of a. An avatar bot that you can, uh, cold call, um, trained with.

And, uh, they're making a lot of noise and they're getting into a lot of companies, um, with this, uh, technology that allows you to, uh, practice your cold calling with, you know, live, uh, with a bot. And it's, it's funny when they do these, uh, you should check them out. They're, they're, they're making inroads. Um, and it turns out cold calling has never been dead.

It just goes through cycles. Um, and I think the phone [00:37:00] is relevant. Again, social is relevant. Again, sending is relevant and it, you know, you, you never what gonna be the signal that someone

trips So you gotta keep trying it. So the answer to your question, Craig, is I don't

Speaker: know that a startup, uh, needs to dedicate time to figuring out how to create an academy for onesie, twosie hires. But You find um. Influencers to follow. um, you know, I'll often say follow, you know, Ralph Barley? Go to flip the script. Um, there's enough stuff out there. Morgan Ingram, Kevin Dorsey, I mean, they're,

they're,

they're out there all over

the place. What, you know,

read the Trish

Bertuzzi, the Sales Development

Handbook.

Um.

Aaron

Ross's book is still interestingly relevant

because of the

massive increases, of

course. Um, it's not

being, you know, the Go-To-Market engineer is now taking over for, [00:38:00] um, uh, the sales ops person. But, uh, so I don't know if, if that answers your question, Craig, but you can't build it for a small startup.

Um, you gotta hire two SDRs from 'em in the deep

end and see if they

can build something.

Craig Rosenberg: Got it.

Speaker 7: Okay.

Matt Amundson: I think the one thing that I would recommend to anybody who's just in this, you know, early stage starting zone is like, one of the things that I think Lars always touches on, maybe unconsciously touches on is. There is something that happens on a really successful BDR team where that that group of, of, of young professionals becomes so loyal, engaged, enamored by your business that they will go to the end of the earth to make it happen.

That they will go

Speaker 6: there

Matt Amundson: to the, you know, I, I used to say this all the time. SDRs that Nothing and. [00:39:00] Like they create this loyalty and this inspiration for this group that like, it's almost immeasurable. So when he talks about like a note that came from Frank Sluman, right? Like CEO send a note that says like, Hey, you know this, here's the reason why we have this SDR team. This is the work that they're doing.

This is what, you know, the, this is exemplary work, however you want to do it. Like if you're a BDR manager and you just go to your CEO and go, Hey, you know this BDR absolutely crushed it. Look, they. Reached out to this person X amount of times they booked the meeting. The AE had a fantastic first call. The sales architect came on.

The deal went super smoothly. We closed this massive deal faster than we ever thought we could, and it all started with this, you know. Uh, incredible drive and motivation by this SDR to, to get into this business. Like that costs you nothing. But it creates this environment around the group where they're like, yeah, we're getting recognized by the CEO.

I'm not just like, you know, uh, fresh outta [00:40:00] college, nobody in this organization and the, the, the group that I'm in has real meaning. And you it. When you can tie that group to like business outcomes, uh, in a way that feels very genuine, that goes a long way.

Lars Nilsson: It is such an important point you make. Uh,

Matt, uh, couldn't, could not agree more. Um, the other thing that I advocate. That all

SDR leaders should do,

and

I don't think a lot of

'em do. It is find time

at the end of the week or, or the month

to pull their

team.

what did

what did

they learn

this week? Right

at the

end of,

at the end of any given

week at Snowflake.

With

300 plus SDRs,

we had

tens of

thousands of touchpoints. Right. Whether

they were calls

or whether they were emails or social or,

you know, opens and I mean, there's, we're talking to more prospects, more

customers than anyone in the

company combined on a daily basis. And I

think it's the, the

mature SDR leader is going to [00:41:00] capture that in

a. Recurring communication that they send up the

chain that

hopefully makes it to the executive leadership team,

uh, round table. Um, and I

think SDR leaders,

um, can have

a bigger impact by sharing what their

team is seeing on the front lines.

The daily, weekly, monthly, and they just Right. they just

don't have the time 'cause they're

doing so much.

So that's. One

thing. And, and the other

thing that I think is

lost on a

lot of

companies is career path. The reason why SDR stay at Snowflake is not

only is there a career path within their own role of SDR,

but

there's also continuing onboarding, enablement and training that they can opt into if they

want to go into sales.

So at

six or nine months, if they wanna learn how more

about the product, more about how to negotiate,

um. The kind of pricing

structures that

that we

offer consumption. They

can

do that as a

signal to outside sales. Hey, we're

building a bench [00:42:00] for

you. Come take a look and also

participate in,

uh, 'cause '

we need teachers, uh,

for these classes.

Um, and,

uh, we also have an

SMB team, um, for SDRs to go to.

I mean, Craig, the big problem in tech

is that the. Leap from SDR to quota. Carrying sales

rep in most companies is way too

long and far, and they

don't have a

role. And so

for a lot of these younger companies, the SDR,

after a year and a

half or a year, they're

burnt out and they haven't learned how to negotiate anything and

so

they

have to leave.

Um, so

I think it's also incumbent upon the startup

to, if they're

gonna start an SDR team, what are we gonna have them grow into? And we need to start thinking about that right outta the gate.

Craig Rosenberg: Did the SDR Academy you built, train them to be sales reps as well as train them to be SDRs

Lars Nilsson: Yes, the,

but the future?

yeah, the academy is broken

up into three different [00:43:00] levels.

There's the onboarding, enablement and training of SDRs,

which they go through their

first

month while they,

you know, before they

take

their, their territory in their

first month, and then

at six or

nine, and then at 12 and

15 months.

Uh, there's, um,

snowbound is, is one of the, uh,

in snow track

are these

two kind

of offshoot

enablement programs

for current

SDRs wanting

to go into sales and signaling

to

everyone

that,

yep, I'm willing to do double

duty here,

do my job,

and begin to,

uh, read on the

outside and, and, and do classes, you know, outside of.

Uh,

hardcore working

hours to pick

up those skills. So yes.

The Snowflake Sales

Development Academy,

um,

follows you

for your entire tenure as an

SDR.

Speaker: SDR.

Craig Rosenberg: Gotcha. That's cool, man. I actually, I mean, I knew about it. I spoke I think once or twice at it. I [00:44:00] didn't get the full scope of what you guys were doing there. That's awesome. I would just say this, forget the academy. You can do a lot of the thi, you could still think of the growth of the SDR in a lifecycle. You can still map out the things that they should be learning along the way. You won't always be able to de deliver it in a academy like fashion. You can do, like there's, there's hacks like you were talking about, which is like, well look, if we're trying to. I mean, I think Bec Holland, actually, her methodology extends way into sales.

So that might be a good one. But you'd still want them to say, look, like in a month we want you to be effective on the phone and via email. Right? And, and at month six, let's start prepping you, because especially by the way, if you're just building the SDR team, those will, as you guys just said, those guys are the future of the.

Company, they always are, um, in the heartbeat of the company. So you could still take a lot of the tenants that you did. You do it in a, [00:45:00] a different way, but like, I like what you said before, which is like, well, you don't have to do it yourself either. You do want to tell them, you know, where to go, where to fish and go look for this information, and certainly where it should happen along their lifecycle.

But I, I mean, I think we could take the things you just said and. Recommend that for anybody. And by the way, I keep talking about startups just 'cause that's my life. But like even if you had a team of 12, you know, oftentimes we'll see a team of 12 and enablement is still lacking. Um, they still prior aren't at the level that you were at to be able to build a formal academy, but they could still take the things you just said and still have, uh, you know, a, a really effective way of not just onboarding the SDRs and making them better, um, but uh, getting 'em ready to be AEs.

Alright, I wanna bring up one other thing I love. F AI role play. I freaking love it because dude, like right now, as Lars said, the phone is back. So

now we have to train, train kids who literally don't. Oh my God. Was that me, Sam? [00:46:00] How did that happen? I'm hiding all my calendars. Oh, there's one that sneaky little bastard got in there.

Okay. So, um, it just rang in my ear, God damn it.

Um, but, oh, you didn't hear it, so I'm just

Lars Nilsson: No,

Craig Rosenberg: just talking to myself, you

know, Hey. Um,

Matt Amundson: little bit, little bit.

Craig Rosenberg: but, but, so even us, but I asked Gottlieb. I'm like, Hey man, if you had to buy two things, it's like a dialing automation and a role playing. Uh, ai. He's like, if you had to just do one, he's like, 'cause the phone's back, the, and like, so, and those are real products that you can use, you know, you can use the, the, you know, the AI dialer to be able to go and be faster, quicker, and more effective in terms of getting to people.

But then. We're in a new era of being able to train people to talk. And by the way, they need a lot of training. This is not a, I'm not an old man instantly, but like, you know, they, they don't, they didn't talk on the phone like we did. I mean, I remember, and you know, when I was a kid, we'd do like the hot Connects, we'd do like party [00:47:00] lines.

We'd like be talking on, like, my mom would be yelling, get off the phone 'cause you're talking to girls until whatever. It's like, we talked a lot now they, you know, it's not as much as a lot digital. So now we, we have an extra layer of training and we could do it. Because I hated role playing. I knew how valuable it was, but as a manager, my God, I had to pretend to be someone and be like, Hey, hey Craig.

This is so and so. Hi. How you doing? No, we don't want any, you know, how do they react to the objections? Now there's these things like second nature, hyper bound. All these things are amazing. And they, you can put them to the test, by the way, uh, Al Bro's kid just got, you know, his first SDR job and he was going through the process.

He was telling me he's like a lot of the folks hiring SDRs make them do the role play as part of a, the AI role play as part of the interview process. This is a breakthrough. This is huge. It's

Lars Nilsson: All, all bro's. Kid is an SDR. My, my daughter just got a job as an SDR. She just graduated. So the, [00:48:00] the next generation.

Craig Rosenberg: they're coming. But yeah, don't you guys think, I mean, it's like, I mean, I remember role-playing is so valuable. It was so cringey. And now we can have 'em do this in like, like the, these role playing apps. You can do multiple persona types. Um, and they can practice and they don't have to practice in front of a bunch of people.

They can do it, you know, on their own. I think it's epic. I think it's great. Nice. Um, so that, that's my other comment on that. As you guys were talking through those, and, and Lars had mentioned that that's, that's just like a, it's a, it's a great, it's a great thing for the world and the business, business world.

I mean, like, I, I'm just wondering like the way, just being able to communicate with people, whether everyone's gonna be doing role plays, this is how you, you, this is I mean, to other human beings.

Lars Nilsson: well what's great about what the guys of hyper band, you can do competitions in team competitions, they're going out now to sales kickoffs and, uh, doing onboarding and like getting the CEO [00:49:00] up there to. Interact with the, uh, cold call bot, and you can have a lot of fun with this, uh, technology.

But y you know what you just said, Craig, you can do this in the comfort of your own home. No one has to hear you fail a mil, you know, 10 times before you get it right. Um, and you work on your narrative and your opening and you know, eventually your, um, personality is gonna come out because that's, in my opinion. Cold calling has way more to do with personality and just, you know, getting someone to, you know, who actually picks up the phone, uh, you know, sit back for a couple seconds and just, uh, and personality has to come out and, you know, a 22-year-old SDR that just graduated, doesn't matter what they did in the background is not gonna have the confidence.

And, um, and, and so I think tools like hyper bound help that in a, in a big way.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah. You know what we should do is, um, we should [00:50:00] have Sam at one of the shows, we're gonna have Sam go up against, uh, ai, uh, avatar and just see if he can get a meeting. What do you think of that? I mean, that'd be amazing.

Sam Guertin: Yeah. Uh, Scott Barker actually did something very similar on, on his podcast, um, with Avara. Um, that's a, another one of those like hyper bound, um, AI role playing tools and he was trying to like book a podcast recording with the, the, uh, Oh, he did it on the show. Yeah, but he's a, he's a really good SDR sales leader type. You, you're one of those young guys who has trouble talking,

Whoa. I I sold, excuse me. I sold at and t plans for three weeks inside of Costco. Okay. And I was a top three rep in that

span. So

Craig Rosenberg: in three weeks, dude. All right. This guy needs a, you need an avatar, that's for sure.

The other thing on the

cool thing, by the way, on

the cool thing [00:51:00] on the avatar, we have a company, the portfolio TVIs, and they do, it's, it's really fast, like you can create your own avatar. So we're gonna start doing. Uh, you know, we have our summit coming up. We're going to have Maria, we're gonna create a avatar of Maria.

And she's not only can she go out and, you know, talk about the summit, right, as a demand gen thing. They can ask questions of the avatar. So it's like they're talking to her. Um, that's like, that's this,

I'm so

Lars Nilsson: it's,

It

Craig Rosenberg: the app I'm talking about is Wide ra, I mean, you could use it for any, I mean like they're building into it is really a, a developer app that you know you can build into any product. the others that are taking that technology and turning them into, uh, SDRs, AEs, et cetera.

I'll tell you this, the first one to go will be the inbound leads where you, if you could put a, uh, a avatar against that because people, you know, they, it's, right now it's a weird experience, you [00:52:00] know, like, um, and most of the time it's just a, a kid sort sifting through, you know, the various leads that come in and then doing a pretty templatized follow up.

Now someone doesn't even have to fill out the form. You know, you would have an avatar sort of, you know, talk to them and greet them because this is the thing I just keep grappling with. It's like, I don't know. I've brought it up before. Matt, I think you've ignored it. 'cause it doesn't make any sense. What

I'm saying

is, um, probably I'll have to do a, a avatar training is that for 20 years we've talked about since serious decisions, this buyers are ex down the buying side before they want to deal with sales.

I. Yet we keep trying to push humans at them the whole time. Like we are, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's ironic like everyone, I have these folks that bring up the 60% or whatever the number is down the buying cycle. All these pitches I remember of the years being an analyst, and they'd be like, and here's how we get the human in.

It's like, well, [00:53:00] if you believe the 60%, that means they don't wanna talk to a human and like they'd rather not have that pressure. So why wouldn't we serve that versus try to twist them into meeting with a human. Now's the time we've got the ai, we've got these things that can go do it. I think what we'll see is like the folks on their initial dissent into your website or whatever, that's having something that's not.

A person that's gonna ask them to follow up and put something on the calendar, um, and just answer their questions and give 'em what they need, I think is a really good use case there. But

what do I know? Uh oh. You're not ignoring me on that

one. Matt. Thank you. I'm gonna not

Lars is too good of a guy. He's gonna get, he's gonna give you credit for it anyway.

Matt Amundson: I'm gonna give you the

Craig Rosenberg: Uh.

Matt Amundson: sure.

Craig Rosenberg: So Lars, what, what? What do you think if you had to make one prediction about the world of SDR over the next year? No. No. You can't have two or five years. I'm talking in one year. Things are moving so fast. [00:54:00] Like tell us what we should be looking out for.

Lars Nilsson: I mean, when you leave the, the playing field, you become irrelevant pretty quickly. But, um, you know, I, when I follow guys, uh, like Brendan and I get into conversations with founders, uh, within the True Ventures portfolio, which I'm still advising for. for. One of the things that blew me away at our last meetup at True Ventures is founders who are in the middle of founder led sales are downloading, right?

Because you can download a lot of this stuff and they're using clay and they're, they're, they're generating operations and they're generating pipeline and revenue all by themselves by. Using this technology before a founder would be like, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm gonna hire a rag or alars and have them come and, and build my operation.

Now they're, they're, doing it because they're interested and it's more of a [00:55:00] technology play. Right. The science has now come towards the product engineering. Uh, design oriented founder, and they're, they're not afraid. Um, you know, I still use your tagline. Uh, the content is king. Uh, Craig, I mean, without.

Inspiration and education, uh, that someone can read or watch or listen. No one's gonna know you're out there. So you still need to have an unbelievable content game. Um, you know, people, you have to read stories about how people used your product and got value from it, um, before you get SDRs and AEs and marketers.

And, uh, so what I always tell these founders is go spend money on a, you know, really good. A Product marketer that under knows how to, how to write or produce or has access to agencies where they've done it before. Um, and then put it out there and let people trip over it. [00:56:00] Let people read and engage and let that become your inbound, that you then put motions behind. And there are founders that are doing all of that on their own because, and they're doing it in days.

Matt Amundson: Mm-hmm.

Lars Nilsson: Right. They're not taking weeks, months, or years

to build this out. So I'm

really encouraged by, uh, today's founders that are not afraid

to start their own, Go-To-Market

all by themselves because they can.

Matt Amundson: Yeah. actually, I love it when that happens, just because entering into a business, 'cause you know, usually I'm joining a, a, a startup as it's getting to the point where it wants like a, a marketing leader. And when you're starting from a stop, which is like, Hey, we don't really know what our go-to-market strategy should be.

And, you know, we don't,

Craig Rosenberg: we don't,

Matt Amundson: we don't see any signal that it should be here, there or somewhere else. It's, it's so hard. It is so hard to spend your first year as a marketing leader trying to invent the Go-To-Market process. And if there's just even a little bit of like, oh, [00:57:00] you know, we kill it at events, or we kill it with this webinar series, or we're like, we're crushing it with these, uh, customer success stories like.

Just having something to anchor onto that they can then build a Go-To-Market strategy around. It's, it's so much more helpful. So, you know, for founders who are thinking, should I do this? Should I not, should I wait until the sales leader comes? Or should I wait until the marketing leader comes? Don't wait, don't wait.

Lars Nilsson: Yeah. Uh, e Evan Lang, um, founder of Lean Data did something just so outta the box. Brilliant. When he started, he hired a retired beat report writer for the San

Jose Mercury News. This guy's

remember

Mark Emmonds

and all he,

all he did, and again, he wasn't even

on

the

technology beat.

He was like the Sunday wine and,

you know, section

and, uh, every time they had

a.

Uh,

brought in a new

customer.

Anytime they created a

new partnership,

anytime they did a new version

release, um, he would

write a story about it.

Uh, and it was more

human interest. [00:58:00] But

every day, every week he was

writing, um, and

he'd follow Evan to anywhere he went and

he'd have a camera and you'd

have a

Bluetooth

speaker and,

Speaker: um,

catch.

Evan in, in conversations at Saster, at at Dreamforce, and everything became. They just got used

to producing content and they had so much of different

form. factors.

And I think founders today, uh, I, I, I don't think they understand and recognize or if they do, they're not doing enough to produce the kind of content that people want to get inspired and, and learn from.

Um, anyway.

Matt Amundson: Love it.

Speaker 3: All right. Well hopefully this is some good content for everyone. Uh. Lars, thank you. And uh, we, it's been great to see you and uh, it's been great having this conversation and so congrats on your career, man, amazing career, and thanks for coming on the transaction. I

Speaker: [00:59:00] Absolutely.

Well, you're one

of

my oldest

friends in the

valley,

Craig, and

we've

stayed together

the

whole

time

and

I've appreciated your

support and,

um,

your

energy

and,

and

Matt,

uh,

great

to see

you,

uh,

on

here.

Um,

you've

been

someone that

a

lot of us have followed

and you're outspoken

and

everything

you

put out

there

is

gold.

So

in,

in my opinion

anyway.

Matt Amundson: Thank you. Well, your opinion's the only opinion that matters to me.

Craig Rosenberg: that's right. Here we go. Let's go. All right, fellas. Good work. [01:00:00]